"What are you doing here, you fool? Why do you look at these women so? These women who are an insult to your torn coat, to your arms trembling with fatigue, to your whole wretched body emaciated by daily hardships! In the days of revolution you thought you could avenge yourself upon society which kept you down by killing soldiers and priests, humble and suffering human beings like yourself? And you never thought of erecting scaffolds for these infamous creatures, for these ferocious beasts who steal from you your bread, your sun. Look! Society which is so cruel to you, which tries to make ever heavier the chains that hold you riveted to eternal misery, that society offers them protection and riches; the drops of your blood it transforms into gold with which to cover the flabby bosoms of these despicable creatures. It is in order that they may live in palaces that you are spending your strength, that you are dying from hunger or that they break your head on the barricades. Look! When you beg for bread on the streets the police beat you with clubs, you poor wretch! But see how they make way for their coachmen and horses! Look! What a juicy grape-gathering they have! Ah! these vintage tubs of blood! And how on earth can the pure wheat grow tall and nourishing in the soil where these creatures rot!"
Suddenly I saw Juliette. I saw her for a second, in profile. She wore a pink hat, looked fresh, was smiling; she seemed happy. Answering greetings with a slow motion of her head, Juliette did not see me.... She passed on.
She is going to my house! She has come back to her senses. She is going to my house!
I was sure of it. An empty carriage passed by. I went in. Juliette had disappeared.
"If I could only get there at the same time she does. For I know she is going to my house! Hurry up, driver, hurry up!"
There is no carriage in front of the door of the furnished house. Juliette is already gone. I rushed down to the caretaker.
"Was there someone here a minute ago asking about me? Was it a lady? Mme. Juliette Roux?"
"Why no, Monsieur Mintié."
"Well, is there a letter for me?"
"Nothing, Monsieur Mintié."
I was thinking:
"She'll be here in a minute!"
I waited. No one came! I continued waiting. Nobody came! Time passed. And still no one came!
"The contemptible creature! And she was still smiling! And she looked gay! And she knew that I was going to kill myself at six o'clock!"
I ran to the Rue de Balzac. Celestine assured me that Madame had just gone out.
"Listen, Celestine, you are a nice girl. I like you very much. Do you know where she is? Go and find her and tell her that I want to see her."
"But I don't know where Madame is."
"Yes, you do, Celestine. I implore you. Please go! I suffer so!"
"Upon my word of honor! Monsieur, I don't know where she is."
I insisted:
"Perhaps she is at her lover's? At the restaurant. Oh, tell me where she is!..."
"But I don't know!"
I was getting impatient.
"Celestine, I have been trying to be nice to you. Don't make me lose my temper ... because...."
Celestine crossed her arms, shook her head and in the drawling voice of a blackguard:
"Because what? Oh, I am getting tired of you, you miserable wretch, you! And if you don't betake yourself from here in a hurry, I am going to call the police, do you hear?"
And pushing me rudely toward the door she added:
"Yes, I mean it! These sluts here are worse than dogs!"
I had sense enough not to start a quarrel with Celestine and, burning with shame, I went down the stairway.
It was midnight when I returned to the Rue de Balzac. I had gone through several restaurants, my eyes seeking Juliette in the mirrors, through curtain openings. I had gone into a few theatres. At the Hippodrome where she used to go on subscription days I had made a search of the stalls. This large place, with its dazzling lights, above all, this orchestra which played a slow and languid air—all this had unstrung my nerves and made me cry! I had approached groups of men, thinking that they might be talking about Juliette and that I might perhaps learn something. And every time I saw a man dressed in evening clothes, I had said to myself:
"Perhaps that's her lover!"
What was I doing here? It seemed it was my fate to run after her everywhere, always, to live on the sidewalk, at the door of evil places and wait for Juliette! Exhausted with fatigue, a buzzing sensation in my head, unable to find a trace of Juliette, I had found myself on the street again. And I was waiting! For what? Really, I did not know. I was waiting for everything and nothing at the same time. I was there either to bring myself as a voluntary offering once more or to commit some crime. I was hoping that Juliette would come home alone. Then I thought I would go up to her and move her to pity with my words. I was also afraid I might see her in the company of a man. Then I would perhaps kill her. But I was not premeditating anything. I had simply come here, that's all! To surprise her all the better, I hid myself in the shadow of the door of the house next to her own.
From there I could observe everything without being seen, if it were necessary not to show myself. I did not have to wait very long. A hackney coach coming from Faubourg Saint Honoré, passed into the Rue de Balzac, crossed the street diagonally to the side where I was standing and, grazing the sidewalk, stopped in front of Juliette's house! I held my breath. My whole body trembled, shaken by convulsions. Juliette came out first. I recognized her at once. She ran across the sidewalk and I heard her pull the handle of the door bell. Then a man came out; it seemed to me that I knew the man also. He came to the lamp post, searched in his pocketbook and awkwardly took out a few silver pieces which he examined by the light with upraised arm. And his shadow upon the ground assumed an angular and monstrous form! I wanted to rush out of my place of hiding. Something heavy held me nailed to the ground. I wanted to shout. The cry was throttled in my throat. At the same time a chill rose from my heart to my brains. I had a feeling as though life were slowly leaving my body. I made a superhuman effort and with tottering steps I went toward the man. The door was opened and Juliette disappeared through it, saying:
"Well, are you coming?"
The man was still searching in his pocketbook.
It was Lirat! Had the houses, the very sky crashed upon my head my astonishment would have been no greater! Lirat going home with Juliette. That could not be! I had lost my senses! I came still closer.
"Lirat!" I cried out, "Lirat!..."
He had paid the coachman and looked at me, terrified! Motionless, with gaping mouth, with outspread legs he was looking at me, without saying a word!
"Lirat! Is that you? It is not possible! It is not you, is it? You look like Lirat but you are not Lirat!"
Lirat was silent....
"Come, Lirat! You are not going to do that ... or I shall say that you have sent me away to Ploch in order to steal Juliette from me! You here, with her! Why that's preposterous! Lirat! Remember what you told me about her ... think of the beautiful things which you had planted in my soul. This despicable woman! Why she is good only for one like me who am lost. But you! You are an honorable man, you are a great artist! Is it to revenge yourself on me that you are doing this? A man like you does not revenge himself in such a manner! He does not besmirch himself! If I did not come to see you it was because I feared to incur your anger! Come, speak to me, Lirat. Answer me!"
Lirat was silent. Juliette was calling him in the hallway:
"Well, are you coming?"
I seized Lirat's hands:
"Look here Lirat ... she is mocking you. Don't you understand it? One day she said to me: 'I shall revenge myself on Lirat for his contempt, for his arrogant harshness! And that will be a farce!' She is having that revenge now. You are going into her house, aren't you ... and tomorrow, tonight, this very minute, perhaps, she will chase you out in disgrace! Yes, that is what she is after, I can swear! Ah! Now I understand it all! She has pursued you! Foolish as she is, infinitely inferior to you as she is, she has known how to turn your head. She has a genius for evil, and you are chaste in body and mind! She has poured poison into your veins. But you are strong! You can't do this after all that has taken place between us ... or else you are a depraved man, a dirty pig, you whom I admire! You are a dirty pig! Come now!"
Lirat suddenly wriggled out of my hold, and, pushing me away with his two clenched fists:
"Well, yes!" he shouted, "I am a dirty pig! Leave me alone!"
A dull noise was heard which resounded in the air like a thunderbolt. It was the door shut after Lirat. The houses, the sky, the lights of the street were in a whirl. And I no longer saw anything. I stretched out my arms in front of me and fell on the sidewalk. Then in the midst of peaceful cornfields I saw a road, a white road upon which a man, seemingly tired, was walking. The man never stopped looking at the beautiful corn which ripened in the sun, and at the broad meadows where flocks of gamboling sheep grazed, their snouts buried in the grass. Apple-trees stretched out to him their branches weighted down with the purple fruit, and the springs purled at the bottom of their moss-covered recesses in the ground. He seated himself upon the bank of a river covered at this spot with little fragrant flowers, and listened rapturously to the music of nature.... From everywhere voices which rose up from the earth, voices which came down from heaven, soft voices were murmuring: "Come to me all ye who suffer, all ye who have sinned. We are the comforters who will restore to wretched people their repose of life and their peace of conscience. Come to us all ye who wish to live!" And the man with arms uplifted to heaven prayed: "Yes, I wish to live! What must I do in order not to suffer? What must I do in order not to sin?" The trees shook their crowns, the corn field moved its sea of stubble, a buzzing arose from every grass blade, the flowers swayed their little corollas on top of their stems, and from all this a unique voice was heard: "Love us!" said the voice. The man resumed his walk, birds were fluttering all around him.
The next day I bought a suit of working clothes.
"And so Monsieur is going away!" asked the errand boy of the premises to whom I had just given my old clothes.
"Yes, my friend!"
"And where is Monsieur going?"
"I don't know."
On the street, men appeared to me like mad ghosts, old skeletons out of joint, whose bones, badly strung together, were falling to the pavement with a strange noise. I saw the necks turning on top of broken spinal columns, hanging upon disjointed clavicles, arms sundered from the trunks, the trunks themselves losing their shape. And all these scraps of human bodies, stripped of their flesh by death, were rushing upon one another, forever spurred on by a homicidal fever, forever driven by pleasure, and they were fighting over foul carrion.